Vintage Humber Path Racer Build

Any love for vintage path racers here ? Anyway , I've had a hankering to build one for a while , took me nearly a year to find a suitable machine , mainly because it had to have the following spec;

Massive 'garden gate' frame with super slack frame angles.
Reverse rear drop outs , and twin plate fork crown.
28" wheels.

Eventually found this imposing machine in Oxford via Gumtree .

Really love the 'Duplex ' twin tube front forks . Very fortunately the 28" rims are stainless steel and near perfect condition ,this is a real bonus.
On the downside the bike's been hand painted with a 6" paint brush and I'm not sure if I'll be able remove the mess to get down to the original enamel , but luckily the brass head badge is still intact . There is also a very unpath racer like steering lock right on the front lower head lug that looks like it could be a right pita to remove .

The offending steering lock

Humber trade mark ' dancing man' chainwheel , though I will probably not use these as the LH cranks shagged , and the cranks are stupidly long 7" (178mm).

original head badge should polish up nice.

My bike was actually build by Raleigh in 1959 , although it's no different to one's made in the 30t's which in turn were based on machines from 1900's.
Right , the plan is to build a replica of a 1900 path racer , not an exact period correct bike , more a collection of vintage parts I like the look of. I intend keeping as much ' patina ' as possible , so no new alloy parts , boutique leather saddles etc .
Next up , the tear down .

love the chainring pattern.

Love it. You need a skip-tooth chainwheel for it!

Beautiful!

i have a frame(well two) earmarked for the same process........ don't see them being built for quite a while yet. i will be following the progress of yours.

what are you going to do about the fork lock?

I'm sure you have seen it before, i know its quite polished. ........ but this BSA shot base path racer is one of my all time favorite bikes.

Those forks on the Humber are amazing. They must have a 10,000 year guarantee

Ah man,

That humber looks in good nick, I pulled out my grand dads and grand uncles Humber which were kept in a damp barn in Ireland;

http://sphotos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/540236_10151075052291716_1744595903_n.jpg

http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/427422_10151075053876716_2054896014_n.jpg

Unfortunately the bike is in an awful state, I have stripped off the parts and will have it blasted to see the real condition of the frame steel, although all of the components are toast so the restoration will be limited. Good luck with your restoration, I'll keep an eye on it.

I'm sure you have seen it before, i know its quite polished. ........ but this BSA shot base path racer is one of my all time favorite bikes.

Love the seat tube fork, lovely restoration.

Yep , done a lot of research , so I've seen plenty of path racers , your right that BSA is class ,I'm gonna go with the same ' gallows' seat post brooks B15 saddle combo , and I would dearly like to get hold of a major Tom style adjustable stem , problary well out of my budget these days .
As to the steering lock , I've had a good look and I recon I can angle grind it off , than fill the hole in with a mig welder , that shape it with a dremmel , these bikes have thick cast lugs so there should'nt be any issues , just a bit time consumming.

would dearly like to get hold of a major Tom style adjustable stem

Major Tom:

Marshall "Major" Taylor, after whom the stem is named

Always wondered who Major Taylor was. great picture.

He was world Champion when Victoria was on the throne, and his name was still being used to sell stems in the immediate post WW2 period when my dad started racing. Indeed, Soma are still using his name, more than a century after he retired from racing. Do you suppose Trek's 2105 model line up will include Armstrong branding?

For the uninitiated among us, what's a path racer?

Love the bike mind.

For racing on old dirt velodromes or other unpaved tracks.

Doesn't have to be unpaved. 'Path' just means track, as opposed to road. Many early clubs included it in their names to show that they covered both kinds of cycle sport. Redditch seems to most visible survivor of this trend.

Oh cool. Well, you learn something new every day.

Is that a gold half link on the BSA? Very interesting project, will be back to check for updates.

OK , so I had some time today to strip the beast . First I had to find my random collection of imperial spanners and sockets , once found , the tear down began .
Well everything started good , everything came of easy enough , even the fixed cup . But , as always seems to be the case , the last job was a complete bitch .
Now when I bought the bike , I diligently checked that the h/bar stem wasn't seized , it was tight , but it moved . Of cause , as soon as I tried moving it in the workshop , the bastard thing won't budge . I was applying so much force , the forks were starting to twist , time to stop.

After a bit of a sit down and some logical thinking , it occurred to me , if I could get the steering lock to work , I could lock the forks to the frame , turn the lot upside down and jam the stem in the bench vice . This would give me the whole solid frame to turn and pull out of the stem . Didn't have a key for the lock , but I did have a ghetto key ( hammer , screwdriver ) 2 mins latter the forks are locked to the frame , half an hour latter the stem's out of the frame , it took 2 of us , but the jobs done.

What to do about the paintwork , has been bugging me . so I got some 120 grit paper , and starting sanding , the black paint came off easy enough , only to reveal a coat of gold hammerite , arse , so much for getting back to the original enamel . So , as an experiment , I stripped the paint off the forks, using an angle grinder with a wire brush attachment ( don't try this on your colnago!) . The bare steel underneath has lovely aged tarnished look , I'm thinking of doing this for the whole frame , what to you think?


Next , I'll be tackling the removal of the steering lock , if I mess that up , the projects over , the tension mounts....

Why remove this lock thingy? Srsly, just leave it alone!

I saw a Humber with this twin-bladed fork recently, at a rally, I took pictures of them as I thought they were ace.

PS I think you should paint it black, and get new humber decals from h lloyds.

And leave it as a safety bike. It's not a racing bike.

Both this:

Why remove this lock thingy? Srsly, just leave it alone!

and this:

you should paint it black,

Stop pretending it's ever going to be a proper path bike and built it up as a roadster-based café racer, which is what it will be if you put drop bars on it. Don't kill any puppies in the process.

Forgive my ignorance, but;

1) what is a steering lock?

...and

2) how do you know this is a "path/racer" and not a town bike?

Oh and definitely black.

2) how do you know this is a "path/racer" and not a town bike?

It's a classic English Roadster, with no relationship to a path bike other than having two wheels.